The MUM Effect
People pass on bad news less fully and less readily than good news, even when nobody can trace it back to them. Early warning depends on making the bad-news path cheap.
The MUM effect is why bad news reaches you late and in pieces. Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser named it in 1970: people keep mum about undesirable messages, passing them on less fully and less readily than good ones.
In 1972 they went after the cause. People overheard a message meant for a stranger and had to decide whether to pass it on. The researchers suspected fear of being judged, so they let some messengers stay anonymous. Anonymity didn't help. People passed on more when they could be identified.
Hiding doesn't make bad news easier to say. The cost is in the delivering.
On troubled software projects, Smith and Keil (2003) describe where this ends up: evidence of failure sits in the lower ranks while the people with authority to change course don't know.
Escalation is the most expensive way to say "this is slipping." Someone has to call the meeting and carry the news. A routine weekly signal from everyone costs almost nothing, and nobody has to volunteer.
The nudge: Add one line to your weekly check-in: "Green, amber or red, and why?" When someone says amber, thank them before you ask a single question.
Source: Rosen & Tesser, On reluctance to communicate undesirable information: The MUM effect, Sociometry (1970); Rosen & Tesser, Fear of negative evaluation and the reluctance to transmit bad news, Journal of Communication (1972); Smith & Keil, The reluctance to report bad news on troubled software projects: a theoretical model, Information Systems Journal (2003)
